Alright, the weather may finally be breaking here in Kansas City in the next week and I'd like to install my 3.5 VLSD pumpkin finally. I've reviewed some info on the swap and I see that most people put the car up on stands which allows them to freely spin the wheels when removing the half-shaft/axle stub bolts and matching up to the bolt holes to the new diff axle stub bolt holes.

For me, I'd prefer to use ramps for safety purposes and general ease. Since the car is on ramps, you can't spin the wheels. From looking at it, it doesn't appear getting to the axle bolts will be a problem even though I can't spin the half shaft. There's plenty of room to work and they're only on with about 50 ft/lbs. Since it's an VLSD diff, when you spin the front flange, the axle stubs turn together in the same direction (VLSD action, an open diff would spin the stubs in opposite directions). This poses a problem with regards to matching the half-shaft stub bolt holes to one axle stub.

The question:

Am I off my rocker by taking a simple scrap wrench to the axle stub and overcoming the VLSD to allow me to rotate the misaligned axle stub bolt holes to match up to the half-shaft stub bolt holes? I've already tried and it works. Is there anything else I'm missing?

 

Not sure about this but I do remember my pumpkin swap last year. It was done with the car on jackstands.

Trust me, it'll be much easier if you put the car on a stands bc if you do run into any problems along the way you won't have to resort to drastic measures to get your half shafts in position to unbolt or rebolt anything down. Plus you'll be free to use a floor jack to help lower that 100lb monster down from its position without any interference.

Just something to think about

 

I did this swap a bit over a month ago.

I put the front tires on ramps and the rears where supported by jack stands.
I had the car in neutral to take out the 4 driveshaft bolts as you only have access to two at a time then you have to rotate the driveshaft by hand to get the other two.
For the half shafts i spun the axles so I had access to 3 bolts at a time. Set the parking brake and then removed the 3 bolts. Slid back out and rotated the shafts slightly to get the remaining bolts while setting the parking brake again.

I then removed the two bottom bolts while having the support from a jack under the pumpkin. The topside bolt was last and once that was removed it took a bit of work and pushing and pulling at weird angles to wiggle it out. Remember to remove the rubber vent hose upon dropping the dif the first 3 inches.

I did not remove my sway bar or exhaust.

Took just a bit over 3 hours

One thing I did not do that I should of, was drain and fill the fluid in the new dif before I installed it